Ross Douthat: the College Years
A look at the newest New York Times columnist’s undergrad writing.By Dylan Matthews and Jesse Singal
March 12, 2009
Ross Douthat, who was just selected to be The New York Times‘ youngest columnist, speaks at a Pew Forum event in 2008.The New York Times reported yesterday that it had hired conservative Atlantic blogger Ross Douthat as an op-ed columnist. Douthat, who will be one of the youngest—if not the youngest—columnists in the history of the Times’ op-ed page, is being hailed in some quarters as a more intelligent, intellectually honest counterpoint to the columnist he is replacing, William Kristol. Others, however, are criticizing the Times for picking Douthat, citing his hard-line views on abortion on and sexuality.
During his college years at Harvard, Douthat was a prolific writer. He was a columnist for The Harvard Crimson, the university’s daily newspaper, and climbed to the rank of president of the conservative Harvard Salient in 2001.
One of the appeals of Douthat’s new perch, at least for progressives, is that he will not hew as closely to conservative orthodoxy as did his predecessor, Kristol. But Douthat’s college writing shows that, when it came to conservatism’s “meat-and-potatoes” issues, he was far from a maverick. In fact, when opining on the “culture war” and, after September 11, terrorism, he held predictably boilerplate conservative views. While Douthat has certainly produced more recent work that allows his ideology to speak for itself, it’s nonetheless useful to see where he stood at a pivotal point in American politics.
Douthat on culture:
“There is a tendency among ’90s conservatives to adopt a bunker mentality, to insist that the forces of moral degeneration are winning the culture war and that the apocalypse is imminent. But there is a wider world out beyond the Charles and Sunset Boulevard, a place where as many people go to church as did in the halcyon 1950s, a place where everyone owns a gun and ‘conservative’ is not a dirty word. It is a place with its problems, including a debased popular culture and a distressing tendency to elect men like Bill Clinton. But it is not the conservative-hating Gomorrah that some right-wingers like to imagine.”
“Today, everything is available, to everyone, at any time. Every deviant desire, dark fantasy and sordid dream can be realized, at a reasonable price. Forget ‘normalizing homosexuality’—something the Right has been worrying over since the advent of gay liberation. Today, the Internet and DirecTV are normalizing everything, from group sex to bestiality to darker things that decency forbids mentioning. And as for pedophilia—why, any erotic website worth its salt promises links to images of the ‘barely legal,’ ‘young teen sluts,’ and all the rest. Today, Nabokov’s Humbert would need not be a tragic figure; instead, he could have spent his years ensconced in front of a glowing computer screen, with a thousand Lolitas for his delectation.”
-The Crimson, October 30, 2000
“If I really wanted to offend Harvard Asians, I might sit down and write an article in which I was, well, a tad critical of the Asian community. For instance, I might suggest that there was, let’s say, a slight trend toward ethnic self-segregation, or a slight proclivity for the sciences over the humanities among Asian-Americans. And I might, if I were so inclined (not that anyone would be), get downright nasty and suggest that a large chunk of these self-segregated, math-and-science types are self-absorbed, clannish and downright weird.”
Douthat on cloning and abortion:
"In other words, for the first time in our history we will have enshrined in law a class of human beings—cloned embryos—who it is illegal not to kill. Even the moral idiocy of our country’s abortion law, which permits the slaughter of fetuses (or the ‘elimination of the unwanted tissue,’ for those who find refuge in euphemism) at any time and for any reason, cannot quite compare to this. Under the rules set down by Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, American women and their doctors are allowed to kill unborn human beings. Under the rules proposed by those who hope to ban reproductive cloning while allowing the ‘therapeutic’ variety, American researchers will be required to kill unborn human beings—by the hundred and hundreds of thousands, eventually."
-The Crimson, December 3, 2001
Douthat on voting:
“[A]bsent a remarkable change in human nature, it seems unlikely the American multitudes, more concerned with ‘Survivor’ and stock options than with the details of Al Gore’s prescription drug plan, will suddenly bestir themselves, flip on CNN, and catch up on all the politics they have missed during our comfortable, decade-long Gilded Age. More likely, a sudden and artificially induced increase in voter turnout would only mean an increase in the number of ill-informed, poorly thought out and just plain stupid votes. To be blunt, most of the people who don’t vote, shouldn’t vote.”
-The Crimson, September 25, 2000
Douthat on the war on terror:
“At least for now, before the casualties mount and the failures begin and the inevitable partisanship rears its head, we seem to be showing the necessary steel for the task ahead. And at the risk of sounding predictable, let me say how glad I am, and how fortunate we are, to have such a collection of hard men and women (Condaleeza [sic] forever!) at the helm of state today. Rumsfield and Powell, Cheney and Wolfowitz, all make me feel far more secure than the collection of ineffective hand-wringers (Anthony Lake, Warren Christopher) who dominated the Clinton years. (Think, for a moment, what a tissue of squandered opportunities Clinton’s foreign policy now seems.) And yes, in that list of leaders I include George W. Bush, whom even I have always considered a good but slightly callow man, but who seems so far to be rising to the occasion[—]as America’s leaders always have, so far. Call it Prince Hal becoming Henry V, if you will, but Dubya is growing up, and his speech last week before the Congress was one of the one of the finest political addresses that I have ever heard[—]and certainly the best American speech since the close of the Cold War. A friend tells me that she watched the speech with a collection of Harvard Housemates, who spent the entire thirty minutes heaping scorn on the President. This should not surprise, but it does sadden.”
-The Salient, September 27, 2001
“[G]oing back to the beginning of Islam, one finds Muhammed himself—the model Muslim, against whose standard all the faithful must be judged. And where Christianity has a Christ who turns the other cheek and gives himself over to be crucified, Islam has a Prophet who makes war—in self-defense, arguably, but with a glad heart, a warlike spirit and a knowledge that Allah is on his side. It is that example, that spirit of war, that flung the early Islamic empires outward to the corners of the earth, that spirit that inspired militant Muslims down through the centuries—a spirit that divides the world into the House of Islam and the House of Unbelief, and declares irrevocable enmity between them.
That spirit endures to this day. Just ask Osama bin Laden.”
-The Crimson, October 22, 2001
“It goes without saying that [Saddam Hussein], too, is busy trying to acquire a nuclear bomb, to supplement his extensive collection of biological and chemical weaponry.”
-The Salient, February 14, 2002
Dylan Matthews is a freshman at Harvard University and a regular contributor to Campus Progress. Jesse Singal is an associate editor at Campus Progress.
Social Bookmarking
--------
Comments
Good work! He shouldn’t have gone to the NYT, he should have been sent to Room 101. Excellent job!
— 24AheadDotCom - Mar 12, 06:03 PM - #I totally disagree. There will always be diverging viewpoints. What matters is how someone carries those viewpoints in the public sphere. Douthat always writes as someone respectful and informed, two traits sorely lacking in Kristol, whose bombast and patronizing tone was matched by his ignorance.
Like it or not there is a side to America which believes what Douthat has to say, and more. Not only do they deserve to be represented in the NYT, if they aren’t then the paper itself is —by definition— biased.
— bakum - Mar 12, 07:01 PM - #Digging up college papers? Really? I disagree with Douthat on virtually every issue of substance, but his views alone do not warrant the reactionary demonization being pushed here.
What is the point of this piece? That Douthat is a conservative? No one said he was a progressive, but some scattered quotes from college are no more indicative of the totality of his thought than the scattered quotes that can be dug up from anyone’s past. If you’re trying to “prove” that Douthat is no better than a Kristol or Krauthammer, you’ve failed.
Which brings me to this question: what conservative would you have preferred over Douthat? Of course, I already know the answer. Whether or not Douthat brings a more intelligent and civil voice to the debate, his ideological underpinnings make him evil, and that, of course, just proves that YOU are the one who is little better than a Kristol or Krauthammer.
— Klaus - Mar 12, 07:07 PM - #What is wrong with his views? The fact that you found the abortion and cloning one worth citing says more about you than him…
— yarrrr - Mar 12, 07:30 PM - #“when it came to conservatism’s “meat-and-potatoes” issues, he was far from a maverick”
Your point? Marureen Dowd is far from a maverick on liberal “meat and potatoes” issues. Should the NYT fire her?
Or is the point to exclude conservative opinions all together? Progress indeed.
— Chris W - Mar 12, 07:37 PM - #“when it came to conservatism’s “meat-and-potatoes” issues, he was far from a maverick”
Your point? Marureen Dowd is far from a maverick on liberal “meat and potatoes” issues. Should the NYT fire her?
Or is the point to exclude conservative opinions all together? Progress indeed.
— Chris W - Mar 12, 07:38 PM - #This is supposed to be damning—the fact that he’s articulate and consistent in his views? the only thing that’s “boilerplate” is your foolish and naive assumption about what’s “progressive” and “conservative.”
— Max - Mar 12, 07:42 PM - #What could be more ridiculous than the New York Times hiring a young, thoughtful and articulate conservative to speak to those across ideological lines? What could be more ridiculous indeed? Well, this list for one. Everyone should take the words of undergrads with a grain of salt. They aren’t known for their ability to tackle nuance.
— Dan - Mar 12, 08:02 PM - #I thought a online publication named “Campus Progress” would support diversity – in this instance, diversity of opinion. A token conservative at the NY Times. What’s so threatening about that?
— Maxwell - Mar 12, 08:22 PM - #A “young, thoughtful, articulate conservative.”
And a “jumbo shrimp.”
Let me know when the Times employs a communist. Then we can really have a purely academic debate on equal terms among failed and utterly hypocritical ideologies.
And oh! the consistency of his views! How awesome is that?? It was actually Muslims who
“flung [their] empires outward to the corners of the earth . . . “ So, if he maintains an idea so utterly ignorant consistently, we should all value that?
In the name of “diversity,” I suppose? Because that is something about which conservatives are soooooo consistent!
— Bobb - Mar 12, 08:38 PM - #Uh, I see nothing there that every conservative hasn’t said or written. If you are going to have a conservative opinion columnist for your newspaper, he or she will have espoused most of the views noted above.
— tennisroids - Mar 12, 08:42 PM - #The only thing you’ve demonstrated is that he was and is a better writer than either one of you. I only wish that he had the guts to tell the truth about Islam today. But, as anyone who read Privelege knows, Ross is desperate to be liked by the right people. Which means that in twenty years he’ll be Gary Wills. The NYT recognizes the type – I think they can smell it on him, and that’s why he was hired.
— Rob - Mar 12, 08:42 PM - #Ah yes, the thought that someone who writes “well” is exempt from considering the validity of his thoughts. Brought to us by Andrew Sullivan, whose thoughts cannot survive one of his own paragraphs.
Christ on a stick, I can’t waste my time enumerating the idiocy of the “right”, from Intelligent Design to deciding that home-schooling is going to make a child better equipped to deal with the world.
Opinions which have historically been assigned to “Poet’s Corner” or the juiced-up corners of Times Square are supposed to be given some mainstream voice?
I really fear for my country. The inmates think they should control the asylum.
— map - Mar 12, 08:48 PM - #I wish one of the token conservatives who keep failing upwards into these choice jobs would write a column comparing the affirmative action afforded to undistinguished conservatives by the traditional media (and there is no way that New York Times and Washington Post e.g. don’t use some sort of quota system to award column space to conservatives) to the affirmative action that not only helps regular folks but conservative hold in such disregard.
— flounder - Mar 12, 08:50 PM - #“Douthat always writes as someone respectful and informed,”
Except when he’s absolutely wrong or pulling fake facts out of his butt. This sort of “diversity of opinion” is the same sort that creationists are always lusting after. After all, what other justification is there for the expression of such buffoonery as Douthat’s?
— Conservatards, Buh Bye - Mar 12, 08:54 PM - #Odd that all of you feel like there is some sort of attack going here; which requires you then to counterattack. It is stated in the opening paragraphs that RD “...held predictably boilerplate conservative views.”—this is something that all but the first commenter seems to agree with. You may be happier if you relinquish the victemhood and siege mentality.
— shawn214 - Mar 12, 09:15 PM - #More interesting is how progressives are seeing the NYT as their exclusive domain, with litmus tests and all.
Repeat after me: “There’s no media bias. There’s no media bias.”
— DB Cooper - Mar 12, 09:25 PM - #This post smacks of nothing else than a desperate and pathetic undergraduate who is quickly finding out that their Harvard degree doesn’t go as far as they had dreamed in this economy. When the losers in the comments section have written a book or actually earned a dollar to their names, then they can mount a critique. Until then, keep posting anonymous online comments, jackasses.
— Brendan - Mar 12, 09:44 PM - #This post smacks of nothing else than a desperate and pathetic undergraduate who is quickly finding out that their Harvard degree doesn’t go as far as they had dreamed in this economy. When the losers in the comments section have written a book or actually earned a dollar to their names, then they can mount a critique. Until then, keep posting anonymous online comments, jackasses.
— Brendan - Mar 12, 09:44 PM - #Ah, the “halcyon 1950s.” Doubt-that wants to go back to the 1950s, like many a conservative.
This would be the same decade when the marginal income tax rate was about ninety freaking percent. And the US workforce was much more unionized. By all means, let’s return to the 1950s.
This is the fundamental contradiction of modern conservatives. They want the culture and middle-class prosperity of the 1950s, and the brutal economics of the 1890s.
— ppp - Mar 12, 10:14 PM - #As Greg Pollowitz has suggested at NR, perhaps Campus Progress could attempt to dig up Obama’s college transcripts.
Journalistic integrity on the part of the Center for American Progress? Surely you jest!
— John K. - Mar 12, 11:06 PM - #As Greg Pollowitz has suggested at NR, perhaps Campus Progress could attempt to dig up Obama’s college transcripts.
Journalistic integrity on the part of the Center for American Progress? Surely you jest!
— John K. - Mar 12, 11:07 PM - #Wow, the incredible inanity of a Harvard undergraduate. This “journalism” is supposed to be damning?
Try reading Douthat’s article for The Atlantic called “The Truth About Harvard.” It’ll show that the typical Harvard student n is an intellectual fraud, which this supposed “journalism” simply proves in spades.
And I second the motion: let’s see this web site do some digging on the undergraduate writing of Barack and Michelle Obama.
— Buzz - Mar 12, 11:28 PM - #I agree with John K….Let’s see Obama’s grades and transcipts…Surely he must have wriiten something..Perhaps a footnoted “Sparks Notes” essay..
— Pat M - Mar 12, 11:31 PM - #You did this with Obama, right? His background and all? You know, about whether BO sprang fully grown from the head of Bill Ayers; something like “Obama: The Missing Decades”? Hmm, no, huh?
You guys stay classy.
— jum1801 - Mar 12, 11:50 PM - #Re: offending Asians.
Oh, so he only “sort of” wants to offend Asians. What a relief.
I’m assuming this twat was post-randomization, otherwise I’d conclude he is pure Eliot house.
Compared to American “conservatives” at this point, nothing is “clannish” or “weird”. They pretty much win the prize.
I say this as a pure Yankee Harvard grad married to an Asian with many Harvard Asian in-laws: Nothing is quite as retarded as a Harvard student calling other people nerds.
— Moxie - Mar 12, 11:54 PM - #Not only should conservatives be purged from the NYTimes, according to the online progressive community, but moderates like Friedman should be purged too. I would never vote Republican in my life, but I think stuffing the editorial page with 7 Krugman clones (as most liberal bloggers apparently want) is missing the point of an editorial page.
— will - Mar 13, 12:27 AM - #I think that the New York Times has made a big mistake. Dylan Matthews is right: being conservative and being intellectually honest and intelligent are inversely related!
— Slovak Menace - Mar 13, 12:45 AM - #Chris W. at 6:38 3/12, answer to 2nd paragraph: yes, though for different reasons than you imply.
— Daphne - Mar 13, 02:32 AM - #Thank you. This makes me like him all the more.
— Bill - Mar 13, 03:29 AM - #Well done! Keep up the good work!! It wouldn’t be fair…it would be an insult to the purity of diversity at the NY Times is someone with a discordant voice were permitted to write there. This is America after all, and people shouldn’t be forced to let someone write what they want without hearing about it first somewhere else, and how wrong that is. Openmindedness is everything!
— Broadsword - Mar 13, 06:58 AM - #Re # 13:
Quote: “I really fear for my country. The inmates think they should control the asylum.”
You do realize that the United States is supposed to be “government by the people, for the people,” right? The inmate (you) is, by your definition, SUPPOSED to be running the asylum. Otherwise, we have a government rather like the one forming now, one with way too much power and not enough responsibility. We have the elite political class electing themselves over and over again, ruling our lives in a true nanny-state fashion.
— haibane - Mar 13, 07:02 AM - #You say Douthat was “far from a maverick” on “meat-and-potatoes” conservative issues like that was or is a bad thing. Project much?
— Patrick - Mar 13, 07:39 AM - #It is kinda funny to see the repigs’ comments here filled with assumptions of the NYT’s liberalness.
The NYT is the paper of safe centrism. If you want radical, try reading a newspaper from the 30’s when people were suffering from the ravages of laissez-faire.
What is called “socialism” now by the repigs would pass for a decaffinated form of center-rightism in the 1930s.
In their race to forget history and ignore the errors and crimes of their idols, the repigs certainly deserve all the scorn they receive.
— You Can't Put Lipstick On A Repig - Mar 13, 08:10 AM - #doughhat? I know what an asshat is & he sounds like one of those so is a doughhat the same thing? I sounds like it might be a cross between an asshat and Jonathan Goldberg, is that a doughhat?
— frankdawg81 - Mar 13, 09:32 AM - #I suppose grabbing snippets of someone’s collegiate writing can be illuminating. I certainly know all I need to about most of the lefties who commented here from their semi-literate juvenile snark.
— Doug - Mar 13, 10:08 AM - #Ah, yes. You may not agree with what Douthat has to say, and because of that, you’ll fight to the Earth his right to say it. Sadly, this IS consistent with the atmosphere at many universities.
— David - Mar 13, 11:29 AM - #It’s not so much the content of these “essays” that is appalling, as is the atrocious grammar. Plural nouns with singular verbs for one example. Then there is the sentence that begins:“Today, Nabokov’s Humbert would need not be a tragic figure;”. “Would need not be” is more correctly phrased either “Need not be” or “would not need to be”.
— Mac - Mar 13, 12:51 PM - #That is the issue. The man can have any views he desires, but at the very least, if he is to be a writer, let him at least familiarize himself with the basics of good grammar.
The liberal bloggers boo-hissing at the Times Douthat pick come off as the the lefty equivalent of the CPAC attendees who booed Tucker Carlson for implying the Times was a decent paper.
— Chris W - Mar 13, 01:06 PM - #I have to admit I was a bit shocked at the volume of establishmentarian scorn in these comments. I should cease to be amazed, but I can’t manage. I hope that you confident mainstreamers suffer notably for your willingness to trust Ross Douthat to tell you truth about what’s going on. I imagine that none of you are as dogged as the man himself, so you’ll rot and fall off before the man himself does.
— Palmer Eldritch - Mar 13, 04:03 PM - #You guys on the left just don’t seem to enjoy debating anyone. It’s all ad hominem and “anyone who think tax cuts help the economy is a moron” and STFU with you guys.
At some level, politics is supposed to be fun. Not mindless robotic agreement with a carefully culled little cocoon of like-minded friends and mentors, but engagement with the logic of all sides of a discussion.
In short, this whole post and about half the comments betray an incredible wussiness — a fear that someone will listen to another side of the argument and perhaps agree with some of it. Can’t have that! So let’s shiv him with his college term papers. Mmm, classy.
— Vail Beach - Mar 13, 07:41 PM - #My girlfriend graduated college with him in 2002. She told me he wrote a book about his bad experiences with the elitists in college, the stuck up rich snobs, but actually, he ran with that crowd.
Hypocrite!
— Joe - Mar 13, 11:22 PM - #I think he will be a useful addition. Since he’s managed to be wrong about absolutely everything, we can just see what he has to say, and do the opposite!
— Susan - Mar 14, 12:13 AM - #re: Joe – Mar 13, 10:22 PM
-Well how would he be able to write a book if didn’t have first hand experiences? So he’s supposed to write a book about bad experiences from the point of view as an outsider? The latter would be laughable.
Fail!
— Che - Mar 15, 05:56 AM - #